Presidential discourse analysis: Irony and sarcasm in pre-election debates

Abstract

This paper proposes a simple exercise of discourse analysis. It focuses on presidential discourse, namely the speeches of the finalists in the most recent elections in the US (2016) and France (2017) during the final pre-election debates. Passages have been selected and submitted to an analysis that highlights the humorous aspects of language use, namely irony and sarcasm. The analysis is based on the principle of contrastiveness. The selected utterances will be looked at from two points of view: the original version containing the humorous component and an imaginary version discharged of the component. The aim of this approach is to observe the differences engendered by the humorous (ironic, sarcastic) aspects of speech in interaction, as opposed to neutral language use.